[Phys-L] Re: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
From: mshapiro at EXCHANGE.FULLERTON.EDU (Shapiro, Mark)
Date: Sat Oct 15 15:23:55 2005
I never cease to be amazed by the duplicity of those "Christian"
fundamentalists who push this stuff on an unwary public. One wonders if
they read their own Bible.
In any case awhile back I posted an article on "Not So Intelligent
Design" that may be redistributed freely.
-----Original Message-----
From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu] On
Behalf Of Robert B Zannelli
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 11:40 AM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
Should be of some interest.
Bob Zannelli
======================================
Now Mooney is a young reporter who has published a highly-touted book
called
The Republican War on Science and he finds himself defending science
against
new and cleverer attacks along the same lines. The transparent ruses of
creationists have mostly faded away, replaced by a new anti-evolution
doctrine
called "Intelligent Design," which instead of crude attacks on
Darwinism,
recruits idealistic Christians to teach school kids and, in the words
of the
founders of the doctrine, "replace materialistic explanations with the
theistic
understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
On the right-hand side of the political dial, this is a practice known
as
"teaching the controversy". Instead of defending their spiritual
beliefs, the
founders of Intelligent Design disingenuously describe their attack on
evolution as a defense of "sound science". In this, Mooney shows, they
are following
a trail blazed by the tobacco industry, which for decades profitably
resisted
regulations designed to protect non-smokers against second-hand smoke
by
claiming such efforts were "political correctness". Mooney quotes memos
from
Philip Morris laying out secret plans to hire public relations
consultants to
form phony "local" coalitions to help "educate" the public against what
the
tobacco manufacturer called "junk science".